The Stealers of Dreams by Steve Lyons In the far future, the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack find a world on which fiction has been outlawed. A world where it’s a crime to tell stories, a crime to lie, a crime to hope, and a crime to dream. But now somebody is challenging the status quo. A pirate TV station urges people to fight back. And the Doctor wants to help – until he sees how easily dreams can turn into nightmares. With one of his companions stalked by shadows and the other committed to an asylum, the Doctor is forced to admit that fiction can be dangerous after all. Though perhaps it is not as deadly as the truth… Featuring the Doctor as played by Christopher Eccleston, together with Rose and Captain Jack as played by Billie Piper and John Barrowman in the hit series from BBC Television. Prologue One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Acknowledgements About the Author For the Monday Night Group – Dave, John, Pete, Phil and Tracy – for having the imagination… It was there again, at the foot of the bed. She could hear it. She tried to do as she had been told. She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes and made a humming sound in the back of her throat to block out its shuffling and its scraping. She tried to focus on that, and on the drone of the night‐time traffic far below. It worked, for a short time. The noise was cathartic; it made her feel brave. Until she ran out of breath. Then she lay shivering in the darkness, hot on the outside but cold on the inside, face buried in her pillow and sheets wrapped around her as if she could hide from it. As if it might go away. Kimmi didn’t want to be a bad girl. But the monster was real. It was real and it wouldn’t leave her alone. ‘An overactive imagination,’ the doctors at the Big White House had said. ‘You’re fifteen years old, Kimmi,’ her mother had sobbed, tearing at her bedraggled hair. ‘You can’t live in this… this fantasy world any longer. It’s dangerous, don’t you see? You have to grow up. Why can’t you… why can’t you be like all the other kids? Why can’t you be normal?’ Kimmi hated seeing her mother like that. That was why she had kept it from her for so long. That, and the incident at school two years ago. It had been her first week. Her teacher had snatched the data pad from her desk, seen the open file and let out a scandalised gasp. Kimmi hadn’t thought much of it before then; she had just been daydreaming, letting her hands wander. No one had cared about her doodles at junior school. She couldn’t understand why they were all making such a fuss now; why the eyes of her classmates burned into her, some shocked, some mocking, some feeling her embarrassment. ‘Perhaps you can explain to me,’ the teacher had said in tones dripping with contempt, ‘what this diagram has to do with the life‐support requirements of the early space pioneers. What it has to do with anything real. I’ve certainly never seen such a grotesque creature in real life. Have you? Have any of you?’ ‘The product of a diseased mind,’ the email home had said. In the Big White House, they had shown Kimmi shapes on a computer. They had asked her what they were, then told her she was wrong. She had tried to argue at first, tried to tell them about the monster, but she didn’t like the taste of the pills they gave her, so she had learned to agree with them. She agreed that the shapes were just shapes and that the monster wasn’t real. And she had drawn in secret after that. Until today. Until this afternoon, when Mum had arrived home early and surprised her. She had snatched her pad away just like the teacher had, dashed it to the floor. She had shaken Kimmi until her bones had rattled. She had cried a lot. Kimmi had cried too, sent to bed without supper, hysterical threats ringing in her ears. ‘Do you want to have to go back to that place again? Do you?’ She had dozed, for a time, and woken in the dark. With the monster. She was listening for it, though she didn’t want to hear it. She couldn’t help it. Her senses were hyper‐alert. There was nothing. She ought to have been relieved. But what if the monster was just doing as she was: staying very still and very quiet, trying to trick her? She had no choice. She had to look. She raised her head hesitantly, praying under her breath until she remembered what the doctors had told her about prayer. She stared for a long time, trying to make sense of the shadows. They were moving, twisting, but that was just because of the info‐screen on the building across the road, casting its light patterns through the gap in her curtains. Wasn’t it? Then, a moment’s white light and she saw it. Its muscular black shape, hunched into a crouch, a wizened limb draped lazily over the seat of her chair. Or was it just the shape of her own clothing, cast aside in resentment? She was paralysed, her throat dry. She wanted to yell, but she knew what would happen if she did. Mum would come and she would turn on the light and the monster would be gone, and she would be upset again. What if she turned on the light herself? What if she could will herself to cross that expanse of carpet, to reach for the sensor? And what if the monster leaped on her from behind and clawed her down? They’d know she wasn’t lying then. Too late. She was a big girl now. That was what Mum had said. Big enough to be logical about this. If the monster was real, then why hadn’t it killed her already? The doctors had asked her that question. She had answered that maybe it was because she had always kept as still as she could. They had glanced at one another, shaking their heads. ‘We’re just trying to help you. Do you want to be frightened all your life?’ they had said. And Kimmi decided now, lying in the dark, paralysed by the presence of the monster, that she didn’t want that at all. She would find the strength. She would stand and walk to the light sensor. She would activate it, and she would turn and look. Towards the foot of the bed. At the monster. Then she would know, one way or another. She thought she heard a warning hiss as her first foot touched the floor. She thought the monster had tensed, readying itself to pounce. And she was frozen again, one foot in the bed and one out. She heard its breathing, but it might have been her own breath loud in her ears. She caught the glint of its eye, but it might have been a flicker from the info‐screen outside reflecting off the smaller screen in here. She heard it growl, and this time she was suddenly, terrifyingly sure. Kimmi leaped out of bed as the monster sprang for her. She felt it brush against the back of her nightdress, and the impact as it thudded into the mattress behind her. It roared, and she screamed as she leaped for the sensor, desperately praying that she’d reach it in time, that the light would work. Then the monster was upon her. She could feel its hot breath, flecked with spittle, on her neck, and its claws in her shoulders and ribs. She could feel its thick tail binding her legs, tripping her. She fell, and its weight bore her down. She was wailing and kicking and hammering her fists into the carpet impotently. And somehow she managed to dislodge the monster from her back, managed to roll over and, for a heady instant, thought she could escape it. But then its great black mass was rearing over her again, and its claws stabbed through her shoulders and pinned her to the floor. And all Kimmi could see was its big black mouth, with its triple rows of teeth. And little tufts of blue hair sprouting from the monster’s bottom lip. Just like in her pictures. ONE Chips had been a mistake. Rose blamed the Doctor. He was used to this travelling lark. Other worlds, other times. He ought to have tipped her the wink, explained to her that chips here weren’t chipped potatoes but chipped something‐or‐other‐else. Some local vegetable, a bit too soft, a bit too blue, with an oily texture and a peppery aftertaste. As she pushed her plate aside, though, she felt a familiar tingle. Sometimes it took just that sort of incidental detail to remind her how far she was from home; that she was breathing the air of the future. The air of another world. Another world… Rose still found it hard to take in, as if it was too much for her mind to process all at once and it would only let her focus on one thing at a time. It didn’t help that this particular world was so human, so… mundane.